Alliance

In the spirit of that wonderful new movie Kick-Ass that came out recently, I decided to get into the spirit and review something that combined both of my two passions – superheroes and heavy metal, past and present – into one…odious, festering package.

Grailknights.

Just when I thought metal couldn’t possibly get any lamer, we get a bunch of fruitcakes dressed up in colorful spandex prancing around with distorted instruments and growly vocals singing about some made up superhero mythology where they have to, uh, steal the holy grail (yeah…) from, uh, a ripoff of Skeletor from He-Man...while a guy in a horse costume passes out beer to their live audience…yeah, are you sure you didn’t just spike my drink with hallucinogenic substances again? No, apparently that IS the real story behind this band, as they figured people would just eat this shit up even despite the fact that the music is just about the most safe, bland, inoffensive music that could ever possibly be called “metal.”

Be honest here. Do you really find this kind of aesthetic gimmick appealing? I know it’s amusing at first, but let’s talk like rational human beings; would you in all honesty pay to see grown men running around in costumes that even third graders would be embarrassed to wear to Halloween parties? Because unless they’re going to make up for that by playing the most fucking unbelievable music I’ve ever heard, it sounds like a huge ripoff to me, and like nothing I would really want to be a part of. I lost enough of my dignity reviewing X World/5 a few weeks ago, thank you very much.

I know the whole idea is “fun,” and that I should give it some leeway for being lighthearted or goofy or whatever, and that I probably have no sense of humor if I don’t find this amusing, but…really, what’s the point? It would be one thing if they matched their over the top image with even more over the top music, but it’s exactly the opposite: this is really, really tame and uninteresting. It’s just about the dictionary definition of those terms. It’s basically another game of how many riffs can we steal from Iron Maiden and still pretend to be dignified? The answer is…56,782. Roughly. It’s melodeath with no creativity or originality at all. When they are not channeling Iron Maiden, they’re channeling Ensiferum, who I have never really liked that much. It’s practically an endless cycle of boredom. The riffs never cook up any semblance of a pulse. They are played with no fire or urgency to them, only a very sterile kind of plodding that makes me want to fall asleep. How can they do this to Maiden harmonies? Is it really that difficult to…uh, just write songs that sound good and powerful?

I…I seriously can’t articulate it any better. It’s about nothing more than simply writing good songs. This band seems to have a chronic inability to do this, for some reason or another. Every once in a while they do some riffing that sounds halfway decent, or clean vocals that are alright, but then it’s just back to lifeless croaking and fluttery, baseless melodies heading towards a hard, cold dead end zone. Songs will start out OK and then you think, alright, maybe this isn’t that bad…but by the end of the song you are bored out of your mind again. Nothing sticks. It’s as substanceless and bland as music comes. Candy metal as sweet and saccharine and unhealthy as it gets.

These melodies are just so dry and restrained. They’re lazy, is what they are. Listen to a track like “When Good Turns Evil” or “Grailquest Gladiators;” these melodies are so enervated that you could probably play them to a group of conservative Christian grandmas and they wouldn’t raise an eyebrow. They are slow, they are wimpy and they are simplistic as hell, and without any kind of stirring power. And if that wasn’t enough, they also throw in shit like that awful annoying “war chant” on “White Raven” – pass me the barf bag. “In for the Kill” also manages to have a really, really grotesque hook that just manages to irritate. And the whole thing still has that godawful feigned seriousness about it, like the band is attempting to be an intellectual group of tights-wearing 30 year olds. Excuse me while I laugh, laugh hard enough to spit out my liver!

While I’m at it, this isn’t even a good gimmick. I mean…the Holy Grail? A He-Man villain as your antagonist? Even the costumes could be more goofy and over the top. Come on, guys; don’t tell me this was the absolute best you could do. It can’t have taken more than five minutes to come up with; this half-cocked aping of already established franchises. You might as well just drop everything and start making metal themed on Monty Python sketches instead. In fact, I’d like that a lot better! At least then they’d actually be taking some direction to a fuller potential. Better than this bunch of half assed crap.

Here’s a message to everyone out there aspiring to become a musician: Don’t play Gothenburg style melodeath. And if you really want to, at least try and make something…original and interesting. Basically, what it comes down to is, try and actually WRITE ENTERTAINING SONGS instead of just leaning on a cheap-shit gimmick to make people think you’re “lovably quirky” or whatever it is people like about this group of butt-clenching mongrels they call Grailknights. What nonsense this is. I’d be a lot more forgiving of this stuff if the band actually put effort into making really good music like they do with making asses of themselves on stage, but they don’t. So back to the $3 bargain bin with you, Alliance! Goddamn, what a stupid album.